New patch, new patch notes. Welcome back agents!
The team has been working hard to bring this patch together following the tracking of multiple issues and the analysis of the overall balance since the launch of Misery Empire. This hotfix is full of fixes for top issues and some pretty major rebalancing on a wide selection of characters that we hope you’ll be very happy with.
Once again, thank you for your continued feedback and your diligence in reporting issues back to us. Keep it coming! Without further ado, let's dive into the details.
General Changes
Performance work and stability
Continued work on optimization for better performance on a wide variety of hardware. We have more of this coming along in the next patches so this is mostly an iterative step on the goal of better performance on every platform.
Weapon Sound Tweaks
Adjustments to weapon sounds have been made all around. Guards' weapons were audible from way too far compared to most spies leading to easy pinpointing of far away enemies. Overall, spies with the loudest weapons have been tuned down slightly to make the difference in audible range less of a huge gap between all spies.
Keycard Visual Changes
Changes to the keycard VFX to make them easier to parse for colorblind players and bring the security rank iconography in the VFX itself.
Server Side Changes
We’ve been actively making adjustments to player spawns behind the scene since the Steam free weekend. We are still monitoring player start locations that are too close for comfort, but are confident that the situation is getting much better. We will continue to update them live in between patches so please keep the reports coming if you experience an unfair spawn.
Additionally, work has been going into matchmaking to resolve issues with launch queue time and reduce matchmaking time overall. We are making good progress on that front and some of that progress is already in the game right now.
General Balance
Special note: We are investigating some balance changes not making it into the build and hope to be able to update those with a backend change and not another build.
Status Effects
We are starting this update with changes to two status effects. Let's dive into the details.
Resistant
Resistant has long been a subject of discussion in balance talks around Chavez. The arrival of Red only magnified this and it’s clear that this effect is too big of a differential in combat. As such, we are lowering the damage mitigation it offers by 20%.
- Damage Reduction: 60% ⇒ 40%
Heartbreak
Red’s charm ability is an interesting one. While the charm side of things is acting as intended, the penalty for breaking that charm yourself is currently too low, making shooting almost always the best course of action. On top of this, the 25% value made almost no difference in actual shot to kill calculations for Red’s arsenal, leading it to being an underwhelming ability.
While this might seem like a big jump in theory, in practice this effect requires a lot of setup and voluntary action from the victim, making it much harder to pull off than Ace’s version of the vulnerable status effect. We’ll monitor the effect this has on Red’s gameplan.
- Damage Multiplier: 25% ⇒ 35%
Agents Balance
Red
Red definitely made some waves with her arrival. Now that the dust has settled we have a clearer picture of where she stands. Our current stance is as follows: Red is extremely strong in a single very specific build and pretty middle of the pack in all others. With this update we are toning down slightly her strongest configuration (Leaning on the resistant status effect with her expertise mod 1) and making headway into making other aspects of her build competitive.
Weapons
The Jack of heart is the uncontested champion of Red’s arsenal currently. We are toning down its fire rate extremely slightly, but mostly buffing her base weapon to be more competitive.
Base: Heartbreaker
- Damage: 8 ⇒ 9
- Fire Rate: 5.75⇒ 6
- Fire Rate: 2 ⇒ 1.9
A previous WIP version of the notes noted a nerf on this weapon. This was a mistake. This weapon will see no change in the hotfix.
Passive
This is really the central part of making Red feeling too strong. Reducing the duration of the buff after recovering coupled with the change to resistant itself should make Red less of a tank and stay more like a well timed damage mitigation if someone decides to attack you right after spending your expertise.
Base: Makeover
- Reduced Resistant Duration: 4s ⇒ 2.5s
Cavalière
Our recent nerfs to Cavalière did a great job of tuning down her oppressiveness. Maybe too much. We are tuning some elements back up to her kit and keeping a close watch on how she performs for future tweaks.
Weapons
We are giving back a bit of ammo to Cav's dragoons to allow her to spray away a bit more with her base option before reloading.
Base: Dragoons
- Mag Size: 14 ⇒16
We recently fixed a bug that made some Cavalière clues stay active for longer than intended. By fixing this, we discovered that the base duration for Cavalière investigation is a bit too tight for comfort, making it less useful than it should be.
Base: Investigation
- Valid Clues Time: 30s ⇒ 60s
Chavez is very strong currently. His base weapon lacks a clear use case against his two mods and the resistant status effect has made him a very tough agent to contend with. We are tweaking his weapon mods to make them less of a direct upgrade to the base and more of side grades to his playstyle.
We’ll keep monitoring Chavez closely to see how he performs in the future.
Weapons
Mod 1: Vigilante
- Fire Rate: 2.2 ⇒ 1.9
- Damage: 22.5 - ⇒ 22
- Limb Multiplier: 0.75 ⇒ 0.9
- Fire rate 0.85 ⇒0 .75
Madame Xiu has been under the radar for a bit. In this update we are giving her a healthy buff to her fighting prowess to give her more of a chance against the rest of the cast.
Weapons
Base: Zhulong
- Fire Rate: 5.75 ⇒5.5
- Damage: 9 ⇒ 10
- Damage: 10 per shot/30 total ⇒ 12 per shot/36 total
- Limb Multiplier: 0.75 ⇒ 0.9
In the spirit of diminishing the overall impact of damage reduction on gameplay, we are slightly lowering the window in which squire is resistant to damage after a cover blow with the Aegis Cover passive.
Passive
Mod 2: Aegis Cover
- Duration: 2s ⇒ 1.7s
Larcin is doing extremely well with his recent changes and we won’t be making major changes to his kit overall.
Weapons
Cadence is currently an underwhelming option in Larcin’s weapon stable and we hope to make it a more appealing choice with these tweaks.
Mod 1: Cadence
- Delay Between Bursts: 0.4 ⇒ 0.375
- Damage: 10 per shot/20 total ⇒ 12 per shot/24 total
Expertise
This one might be a bit unpopular. While we really like the creativity of the strategy of jumping to peak out of Larcin’s smoke bomb, we had to come to the conclusion that its widespread use is negatively affecting gameplay. We are looking at a rework of how this ability works in the future to allow this kind of creative strategy in a more balanced manner, but in the meantime we had to make the call to raise the zone’s height.
Mod 1: Smoke Bomb
- Increased Height to prevent jump peeks.
Did we hear Buff hans? Hans has been doing much better according to our analytics since the release of Misery Empire. We are still making a bit more tweaks to get him in a better place with more variety of weapon choices.
Weapons
Currently, Hans base weapon is his worst option. We are buffing it’s fire rate to make it more reliable and less punitive on partial hits. For the Jab, we are toning down the headshot multiplier in ADS as its firing speed could lead to very oppressive melting speeds on out of cover spies. We are also giving the uppercut’s ads more of a “precision weapon” identity with chunkier headshots.
Base: Hook
- Fire Rate 1.2 ⇒ 1.25
- Adjusted spread to be a bit more permissive for hits.
- ADS Crit Multiplier 1.75 ⇒ 1.5
- ADS Crit Multiplier 1.75 ⇒ 2
Yu-mi
After a long session of lo-fi beat study, Yu-Mi has gathered new-found strength. We are giving her a bit more versatility in close range fights, adjustments to her healing bubble and a sizable buff to the booby trap passive to enable all-new playstyles.
Weapons
With her charge speeds a bit longer than before, Yu-mi has been having trouble in frantic fights. We are giving her more damage on uncharged shots but also buffing her charged shot on her base weapon to make it more competitive.
Base: Tactical Slingshot
- Uncharged Damage 20 ⇒22
- Charged Damage: 30 ⇒33
- Uncharged 15 ⇒18
A minor tweak to damage dealt by the EMP bubble on impact makes it a slightly better engagement tool to start a fight. We are also making the delay before healing kicks back in the healing bubble shorter to make it more reliable in a pinch.
EMP Blast and EMP Flock
- Bubble projectile damage if shot directly at a enemy raised 12.5 ⇒ 15
- Reducing time before being able to heal again after taking damage by 30%.
Passive
Booby Trap was always an appealing ability in theory, but underwhelming in practice. We are expanding all aspects of the bubbles left by the ability to make it a potent blocker to agents chasing you and a versatile tool to create bubbles by destroying your own gadgets.
Booby Trap:
- The size of bubbles created when gadgets are destroyed is larger and lasts longer.
While we are looking for more wide ranging changes to gadgets balances, this hotfix is not the place for it. We are focusing on reigning the umbrella for now.
Umbrella Shield
The shield has been quite oppressive when in the hands of highly skilled players and while we want it to remain a strong option, it’s a bit too strong currently. The tweaks we are making here are probably not the full solution to tweaking the shield. We will probably need to make deeper changes to how it works in the future, but we still wanted to make smaller changes in the short term to make it a bit more manageable
- Reduced deployed shield HP150 ⇒ 100
- Deployed Shield duration changed 30 seconds ⇒ 20 seconds
- Deployed shield pickup time no longer affected by hack speed up powerup.
- Deployed shield pickup time raised slightly to make it a bit more of a commitment during a fight.
Bug Fixes
Top Issues
- Fixed a bug that allowed the use of the sprint button in mid-air to gain more speed. Your air speed will now be based on your speed on the ground when starting a jump. A running start will keep running speed.
- Fixed several achievements that would not unlock when meeting requirements.
Yu-mi
- Yu-mi’s booby trap ability no longer pauses her bubble cooldown when activated.
- Yu-mi’s cooldown now starts when her bubble is finished instead of during it to prevent multiple overlapping bubbles.
- Fixed an issue leading to Yu-Mi’s slingshot getting stuck in charge animation when chaining multiple quick shots.
- Fixed clipping issues on Red’s skins.
- Fixed Red and her allies not playing the healing VFX when using her expertise mod 1.
- Fixed Xiu’s mastery skin having a twisted wrist.
- Adjusted animation transitions on ads to cover idles for Ace.
Silver Reef
- Fixed collision in Silver Reef allowing a peek at a vault terminal.
- Fixed collision issue on Fragrant shore small trees that would block players and shots.
- Fixed multiple issues allowing players to clip into walls.
- Fixed collision issue in Hard Sell auction hall, allowing to see through the roof with a drone.
- Fixed windows disappearing in Diamond Spire Vault room at certain settings.
- Fixed an issue that caused the npc of a player that used a bounce mat in the past to visibly jump in-mid air when appearing in another player’s line of sight.
- Fixed interacts that were not supposed to be affected by the increased hack speed powerup leading to instant interacts.
- Better handling of npcs bumping into doors they do not have access to.
- Fixed multiple clipping issues on a variety of npcs.
- Fixed an issue that caused npc to slide around stuck in a social interaction animation.
- Fixed an issue where players names would be replaced by “WWWWW” when leaving a team match
- Fixed agent eyes appearing as transparent on player portrait at low setting
- Fixed NPC animation stuttering when traced from far away.
- Fixed Calling Cards previews appearing at low resolution in catalog.
- Fixed Ink preview reflections looking different from in-game in the main menu.
- Fixed players being able to open loot briefcases while queuing, leading to missing the opening on match start.
- Fixed Larcin’s catalog skin not working properly with items in hand while in-game.
- Fixed Hans expertise projectile being visible through walls.
- Fixed an issue that led to cover accelerator powerup having additive effect when a player was resurrected.
- Fixed umbrella shield not keeping damages from allies when grabbed and redeployed, leading it to be full health.
- Fixed stuttering caused by changing cover due to social interactions refreshing.
- Fixed issues with goo-pod vfx not replicating correctly in some situations.
- Fix for scrambler breaking intel visual.
- Fixed Ann Civilian NPC variation having her neck broken in most animations.
- Fixed Field Upgrades chest disappearing when opened at a certain distance and FOV.
What’s next?
We’ve talked in length about the changes we are working on for the heat system and this is currently our priority for the next update coming down the line. The changes involved are too big to risk bringing into a hotfix for stability reasons so hang tight for those.
We’ll also be shipping other changes with the heat system that we hope you’ll find exciting. We’ll bring you an in-depth dive on these changes and additions as we get a bit closer to that patch.
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